Verbal Abuse in the Minor
by ezyl
Summary: There is no beginning, no end. Just one wish. Tezuka, stay gold, even after I die. Ends het.
1. END

**TeFu. One-shot. Explanatory. Death. Not to be updated soon. Disclaimers apply.**

**I am speaking in fragments. XD.**

_

* * *

So this was what it was like, when the top of the world falls on you. When everything you'd lived for had withered right in front of your eyes._

_Tezuka was drowning._

_/to cry/_

And, to think, it had all begun when Fuji Syuusuke jumped off a bridge.

The one at the east port, and on the midnight of June 31st, no less. No one had been there to witness it, save for a meandering, gossipy pair of old women (God knows what they were doing up that late and strolling the banks of such a shadowy river). The fatter of the two ladies –the one who had not thrown up at the sight— had described the boy as "a drunk, _young_ man, who was about to pass out before he went down."

The description was so blunt, so blunt that Tezuka wished there had been more details.

Fuji was wearing a violet-colored tennis shirt; the one Tezuka had given to him for his twenty-third birthday. By the time the police had finally managed to fish the brunette out of the river with an old wooden boat, he was drenched from head to foot, his face a mask of pale white, and a curious note clenched tightly in his right hand, so tightly that it had somehow escaped the curse of the murky river water.

"_I'm sorry, Eiji."_

Kikumaru had cried, of course, absolutely _bawled _his lungs out. It might've been due to the fact that he and Fuji had been lovers since the end of high school.

High school. Tezuka was pretty sure that was the last time he'd talked – actually _talked,_ with Fuji (the birthday shirt had been delivered by an anonymous, carefully packaged UPS box). Not any big, deep conversation, even. Just polite small talk that usually began with "How are you, Fuji?" and ended in "I'm good, too."

He wondered, with a slight bitter sadness, why he hadn't been mentioned in the note. The scrap of paper couldn't have held anything more than that tiny apology to Eiji, and Tezuka was sure that Fuji's mind hadn't been filled with anything but alcohol at the time, but he reasoned that, since he'd never been jealous of anything else in his life, he could allow himself the liberty of thinking, _just once_, a bit more for himself.

Fat lot of good _that _would do for him, now, anyhow.

And Fuji was dead, after all. That was fact.

He contemplated the situation, and a _why_ popped out. _Why_ would Fuji Syuusuke, at age twenty-six, already a successful photographer with several prestigious art awards tucked under his belt, the tensai of all tensais, why would _he _ever considering plummeting to his death from a sixty-foot high water dam?

He realized that it couldn't have really been the liquor. Fuji had always been one to hold his own at drinking. Why, once he'd downed three pints of Kawamura's best sake, and still managed to annihilate Momoshiro in a ten-minute match. He'd also been uncharacteristically rough, so rough that the power player hadn't gotten in a single point, even complaining about his shoulder hurting after the game.

And Fuji's swimming couldn't have been much of an issue, either. Tezuka remembered the time, at a class outing, when the boy had jumped into a lake to rescue one of his fangirls (it didn't really matter that it was actually Fuji's fault that the girl had fallen off the cliff in the first place).

No. Fuji had jumped, simply because he had given up.

Given up on life.

Given up on Eiji.

Gave up on Tezuka.

His stomach involuntarily lurched at the thought.

That was why he hadn't cried when he attended the funeral. When he heard the dark, melancholy chamber music that Fuji favored, he had turned his head around and frowned at everyone. When the palette bearers marched solemnly down the aisle (Fuji Yuuta leading the procession, a mechanic smile situated on his stony features), Tezuka had the urge to get up and stretch. When the time came for the eulogies, he decided to skip out and leave the hall altogether, climbing into his green SUV and driving home in an irritated mood. It was like something was bothering him then, an itch in his mind that he just couldn't scratch, no matter how hard he tried to claw at it.

And even if Tezuka didn't want it to appear so, he knew it all along.

If anything, he was being a coward.

A stupid, fucking coward.

It had been the absolute last straw when Izumi dumped him, sealing the fate of seven unsuccessful relationships. In desperation and utter defeat, he'd let a few tears drop down.

With the sound of the salty seawater slapping against the kelp-ridden sandbar, calmly in the background as if no melodrama had occurred in the last ten minutes except a hermit crab being picked up by a gull, Tezuka made his way back to his car.

He drove home in a daze, the feel of a dry, cracking wetness over his cheeks where the tears had been before, and arrived at the bottom of his apartment building, where he lived by himself in a penthouse flat. It was a few minutes before nine, and when he'd finally climbed up the stairs (he never thought the elevator was good for anything), Tezuka met with the enraged face of his building manager. The balding man was standing directly in front of Tezuka's front door, arms crossed firmly against his chest and an annoyed look on his face, like he'd been guarding the entrance for ten hours and waiting for the owner to return.

"No more girls."

Tezuka frowned. Golden eyes blinked behind clear, frameless lenses.

"Pardon?"

The manager rolled his eyes, "I _said_, no more girls, you got that? And cut out all the _questionable activities_, too. I've already got way to many complaints from Takahashi-san down the hall and Li-baa-san downstairs, reporting loud thumps and screams against your walls, deep into the night…" his fat cheeks reddened when he realized what he was implying.

Tezuka remained polite. It helped in uncomfortable situations like this one.

"I regret any distress I've caused. Please accept my sincere apologies; it won't happen again," he murmured softly, twisting the lock on the door and pushing it open with a slight creak, "Good-evening, Ueno-san." The door snapped shut in the little man's pink face.

"I'm home," he called to no one in particular, save for a framed photo sitting on a stand and shrine on a wooden shelf above the fireplace.

If anyone asked, Tezuka would be the first to admit that it was a rather foolish thing to do, setting up a little secure place in the living room for a long-lost person he'd grown far apart from in a few years. Even so, he still kept it there, sometimes indulging himself for a while just staring at the photo, his thoughts drifting.

It was stupid. Once or twice he'd removed the picture and thrown it into the trash, but it would never get far before he fetched it our and brushed it off, slipping it back into its rightful place. There was a time when Tezuka had been so desperate to retrieve the photo he had chased after the dump truck, running after it like a madman and making quite a scene frantically digging through the garbage bags for that little photograph as the garbage man stood off to one side, tapping his boot on the asphalt road and shouting various forms of the phrase, "Make up yer mind already, dammit."

And it wasn't because he didn't want to leave it, but because he _couldn't_ leave it.

Atobe had been the one to save his neck in the end, covering for him at the office and firing anyone who had come close to the truth of their boss having gone through a pile of dirty paper diapers and rotten apple cores looking for something so frivolous.

"A meaningless photograph," the purple-haired diva had declared, "and it'd be better if you just forgot all about it."

But he couldn't. That was the frightening bit. Tezuka couldn't live without that photo. It was so silly to say, but he knew it was the truth. To think that, once being Seigaku's pillar of support, and so independent and strong, he had fallen to a state of complete reliance on a simple picture.

It was laughable. _He_ was laughable.

That was how he ended up dating all the girls in _ore-sama_'s reject pile. And whenever he invited one of them to his flat, each of them would inquire, with a certain amount of jealousy, _who's the pretty brunette in the photo, a past girlfriend?_

To this, they would receive a curt response, "Actually, _he_ was a good friend of mine in high school."

If they asked for further details, an even icier answer would come, its tone flat and expressionless, "He's dead." (And that would usually signify the end of their date.)

_He's dead._

Indeed, Fuji Syuusuke was dead.

And Tezuka hadn't been able to talk to him before he left.

Maybe it was the guilt that had gripped him, or the shame he felt from ignoring Fuji's attempts at communication, that kept the close-eyed, forever-angelic face (with a hint of slight _darker_ side) to keep looking down from the mantel as Tezuka watched the evening NHK broadcast while finishing a late dinner.

The man was guilt-ridden. But anger would always replace that guilt when he thought of Kikumaru, and Fuji and Kikumaru.

Eiji. Tezuka remembered the last year of high school…

_It was an hour after the last period, he had gone back to the physics classrooms to grab his textbook, and walked in on the two of them, locked in a passionate embrace and a chilling kiss._

_Tezuka had felt a large tremor in his chest, and his breathing stopped as he hastily backed out, gripping his textbook like it was about to crack._

_He shut the door behind him, and ran like hell. And however uncharacteristic he seemed right then, in full sight of anyone, he just. Didn't. Care._

_Not anymore._

_What killed him even more, though, was the fact that it had clearly been Fuji who had initiated the kiss, pinned Eiji onto one of the desks, and undid the first three buttons of his shirt._

It was that day, when he realized that he would never get what he had desired for the past three years. And thus, he decided to break contact with Fuji and Kikumaru. He had reasoned that it wouldn't be as painful as talking to them and knowing full well what they were doing together behind his back. He would've kicked both of them off the tennis regulars team (he was _that_ angry), but decided that it was inappropriate and would probably just stimulate even more rumors. As if there weren't enough of those.

Instead, he resigned. _He_, Tezuka Kunimitsu, head of the Seishun High tennis club since sophomore year, had resigned from tennis.

(Not really, of course. In the end, he decided to try playing in the minor circuits, and wound up winning a few trophies and medals here and there. The pro-leagues he had left for Echizen to master.)

And everything had been coming along just fine: he'd graduated college as class valedictorian, gotten a well-paying job (though, unfortunately next to Atobe), and even dated a few girls in his spare time…

…until Fuji decided to throw himself off a bridge.

That was how Tezuka became a closet mourner, continuous dumpee, and a man of a million broken dreams.

_/to laugh/_

He could swear he'd been hallucinating a lot, lately. Or maybe he'd just been taking in too much caffeine. No, that couldn't be quite it. Tezuka had always prided himself in being able to get up in the morning and catch the early bird special at the parking lot near his working complex.

It was just…

Lately, every time he'd been walking alone, or practicing by himself at a street tennis court, Tezuka would always feel another presence watching him. Watching, and waiting. It was a pearly mist that often circled around his footsteps.

The first thought that had come to his mind: _Stalker_. But his checking behind him every three steps, coupled with his lightning fast reflexes (honed from years of hardcore speed tennis) proved that Tezuka was just scaring himself.

Funny, he had never pegged himself as one of those paranoid schizophrenic types. Tezuka had never visited even visited a psychic before, and doubted he ever would (it might have been just because Atobe was a regular guest at Madame Eye's coffee shop, but he could never be sure).

But the mist was so real, almost like a cool, ghostly presence, a chilly breeze in midsummer –

And then he had an annoying thought.

_God. I've become dependent on an inanimate object and now I'm entirely paranoid. What's next, entering a state of being completely mentally unhinged and actually accepting Atobe's dinner offers?_

It was disconcerting, to say the least. But he found himself rather liking this presence. In fact, he had been so sure that he had once seen a figure drift between those clouds, a familiar, smiling boy.

"Tezuka, are you okay?" A cup of fine, French roast coffee was settled down amongst the scattered internship applications and stat reports in Tezuka's in-tray. Atobe Keigo plopped down opposite his co-worker, in the leather seat for customers only.

The honey-haired man glared, but his gaze softened at the sight of French-roasted coffee. Trust Atobe to know what his weaknesses were.

Honestly, Tezuka didn't know how he could've survived at the company for so long without the purple-haired diva always lending him a hand.

He'd learnt to accept the diva's help, however grudgingly. There was a time when Tezuka needed no help, held no weaknesses, but those days were gone. Even though he still despised Atobe's overtly-pompous presence and his odd, egotistic habits, he'd gotten used to it. He and Atobe were business partners, after all, and one word from the guy could easily kill Tezuka's job for good.

Tezuka looked up, "Yes?"

"Ore-sama doesn't like it when his business partners are under the weather. Oh, don't tell me, did that bitch Izumi dump you?"

Tezuka's eyes averted from the diva's penetrating gaze. What was he supposed to say?

_I'm being haunted by the ghost of a man who had jumped off a bridge three years back?_

Certainly not.

_I still love him, and constantly think about him?_

Atobe would probably cart him off to the hospital. He was the one who had been against Tezuka's feelings for Fuji, in the first place. If the diva could read Tezuka's mind at that moment, he'd might've joined Fuji and jumped off that bridge, too.

Having received no answer from the stony man in front of him, Atobe breathed out a sigh and stood up from his seat and stepped out of Tezuka's office, with a sharp sense of disdain.

_You don't understand, do you, Tezuka?_

Of course he didn't. He never would.

_Ore-sama loves you._

And it was as simple as that, but at the same time utterly funny. Atobe Keigo, one of the biggest business tycoons in the world, had fallen in love with his handsome co-worker. They had worked together for six years, now, ever since Tezuka left college and begged Atobe for a job in order to pay off his sick mother's health care. The diva had agreed without a true word of protest, not because he pitied the man…but because he had loved him since the end of junior high.

It was unbearably cliché.

Atobe would've told him—oh yes, he would've—had not once heard, with his very own ears, Tezuka Kunimitsu profess his love for Fuji Syuusuke, in all his drunken glory.

_He didn't remember where, exactly which bar they had tramped into the night of the brunette's pitiful funeral, but all he knew was that Tezuka had called him and asked for his company…something the man had never required from Atobe before._

_Seeing the downcast look on his friend's face, the diva demanded to bartender for a couple of slim whiskey shots and a quick chaser. He hadn't expected Tezuka to actually join him when he motioned for two shot glasses, but the man had unexpectedly wrestled the cup from Atobe's hand and took a full shot, tipping his head back and not uttering a single word afterwards._

_Something was wrong._

_One glass filled into two, two into four, four into twenty-six. By the end of his ninth shot, Atobe had given up and stared in amazement as the former tennis captain consumed glass after glass. The man's movements increased in awkwardness, becoming more and more stagnant as his tolerance approached its limit and the only sign of it an unnatural rosy tinge in his usual ghostly pale cheeks. He hadn't tried to stop the guy, it looked like he was actually enjoying it and Atobe had never seen Tezuka enjoy anything, really._

"I really loved him."

"_Who?" the diva asked, examining the whiskey bottle and barely registering as to what the hell Tezuka was nattering on about._

"Syuusuke."_ The name came out slurred-sounding, but it was obvious to Atobe's ears. Even so, he assumed it to be drunken talk and paid no attention until he saw the Tezuka's face. _

_The brown of his eyes glinted with a clear, sober light beneath crystal clear lenses and fluorescent bar lighting._

_So this was what it was like, when the top of the world falls on you. When everything you'd lived for had withered right in front of your eyes. _

_Atobe's eyes widened._

"_Wait—"_

_But Tezuka had totally entered drunken heaven, tipping the rest of the Alaskan whiskey onto Atobe's clean shirt and conking out right there, on the polished wooden countertop of the bar._

And so Atobe knew, and Tezuka knew that Atobe knew, and that was how it went with the two of them. (It also helped that Tezuka had somehow discovered Atobe's secret Echizen fetish, so it would be fair to say that things remained even between them.)

How surprised his co-worker would be, if he knew that Atobe had another one up his sleeve. But this secret, this secret _wanting_ of Tezuka, was one that Atobe would never spill. Over his dead body.

_It was something to get over,_ Atobe supposed, and he left it at that. And it wasn't as if the diva didn't already have his _own _personal romance to toy with. Opening the door of his private chambers, the man thumbed the speed dial on his cell phone, cursing when the robotic, distinctly-female-sounding speaker rumbled, "Ca-lling. E-chi-zen Ree-oh-ma."

He could always live life without Tezuka, as long as he had a reservation and the silken bed sheets of _L'Hôtel Royale_ waiting for him, and an anxious, naked little Ryoma crouched on top of that.

He just wasn't sure if he'd be able to live life to the fullest.

Oh, well. Not that it mattered much.

And the thought passed through Atobe's brain without another suspicious glance backwards.

_/to run/_

It wasn't like Tezuka had no experience with women. He had just never been quite as interested in them as he was supposed to, he guessed. It may have been because of all the premature exposure to all the feral (or perhaps, crack-smoking) fangirls watching his every step, before he had grown a set of hormones and a proper-sized—well, you-know-what. The fact that his early life mainly revolved around eight other boys of the same age could've contributed to it, too.

_But there was that time, when…_

The vague image of a gentle brush in the hand and a shrill laugh echoed in his head, and the old déjà vu kicked in for a millisecond.

He couldn't really remember what happened, anyways.

And when he had finally gotten to a stage where he became romantically interested it was –just a bit— too late. Fuji Syuusuke had already been staked (or rather, the pretty boy had already staked someone else, and that someone had not been Tezuka).

It was, to say the least, a disappointment. Tezuka had always figured that he would be able to get over it, and eventually make peace with his childhood friends, but the time had never come. And before he knew it…

Death was upon them. Fuji had –clearly, now, but not-so clear then– other plans.

Now, the only place Tezuka would ever be able to reconcile with was in his own living room, and towards the still form of a sixteen-year-old boy, forever captured between a sheet of glass and three pieces of cheap cardboard backing.

Sometimes, he really wanted to stop living like this. Atobe had once commented that he "resembled a living ghost who did everything without a second thought, except when it came to Fuji".

And it was true. He's walk to the supermarket, pick up some apples, and Fuji Syuusuke and his Fuji-apple addiction would come to mind. When he'd had his evening coffee and sometimes a glass of red wine, he'd suddenly remember Fuji's pink lips, as the brunette drank a cup of vegetable-flavored pearl milk tea (his favorite rendition of Inui juice). Half-way through typing up a critical report for tomorrow's business meeting, Tezuka would suddenly hear tinkly laughter, the kind that Fuji used when he reminded Tezuka that he shouldn't over-work himself so much.

The worst was when he needed to pee. When an image of Fuji Syuusuke appeared in his head in the middle of unzipping his fly, Tezuka would almost immediately have to jump into the shower stall and dash himself with cold water (that was how he had once ruined his best long-sleeved shirt).

Tezuka was drowning.

Surely, this was worse than stepping off the edge of a bridge and holding your breath for a few seconds. Much worse.

He brushed the rest of the golden hair that had somehow managed to get in his eyes, and decided to take a walk.

The streets outside were considerably dimmer and much less bustling at a quarter to midnight. For once, Tezuka despised the deadbeat whispers, absence of cars, and the lights in all the nearby shops dampened.

Where was a distraction when you needed one? Tezuka stepped out into the moonlight, swamped by murky summer storm clouds, and pocketed his keys. A stroll in the park would do.

It was when he started to walk, did Tezuka notice an all-too familiar mist beginning to gather around him. He still couldn't believe it was a ghost…it was too surreal.

He remembered a time in junior high, when there were strange rumors of a haunted racket still floating around the tennis club. It was bizarre, and only he and one of the freshmen, Horio Satoshi, didn't buy the twisted tale.

_"Tezuka, do you believe in ghosts?"_

He had given Fuji an alarmed look, added a curt shake of the head.

Now, he wondered if he had spoken too soon.

The park was empty, save for a few slumbering homeless people and the occasional stray cat. Tezuka sat down at a park bench and focused his thoughts on something else. Anything else. And then he remembered reading the police reports early that morning. His mind had been wandering, and debating whether or not to hire a butler that Atobe recommended (he had decided that Atobe was crude enough to think that he needed one), but he had managed to catch a few lines in the third paragraph on the right.

_Fuji Yuuta - Suspected death of suicidal drug overdose. Initial cause is still unclear and in the midst of investigation._

Tezuka felt like he'd been run through by a chalk of ice.

Fuji Yuuta. The pleasant, feisty younger brother. _He_ would never understand why people referred to him as Fuji's little brother, but it was definitely not because they looked down on his tennis. Tezuka knew that people respected the youngest Fuji sibling as much as the eldest. No, it'd been clear to everyone but Yuuta, that it was just easier to refer to him as Fuji's brother, than Fuji Yuuta. It wasn't much of an excuse, but it was one nonetheless.

In any case, all of that didn't matter. Because Fuji's little brother had killed himself.

Tezuka blamed the stupid police reports, not giving him a minute of a peace of mind.

And then he had realized, with more jumbled thoughts in-tow, that it was three minutes until the clock struck twelve, and that after three minutes it would mark the death of Fuji Syuusuke for three years.

Had Yuuta planned this? To die almost three years after his older brother, as some sick tribute to a loved one? Was it too much to bear? What would happen to their older sister, then, Yumiko? Tezuka was a bit amused that he'd still managed to recollect the name of Fuji's sister. He rarely remember the first names of any girls he encountered (it was only five years later from his last year in junior high did he learn that Ryuzaki-sensei's granddaughter was named _Sakuno_).

But Fuji Yumiko was special, he thought. He remembered the countless times Fuji's sister had drove by Seigaku, asking Syuusuke and sometimes Tezuka himself, if they needed a ride home in her pretty red convertible. He had been more in awe of the woman with her car, rather than her name, but somehow, perhaps during one time when Fuji had delightedly held his seatbelt for him, his breath in Tezuka's ear and spoke to _Yumiko-nee_ about something exciting during tennis practice, did he catch onto Fuji's sister's name.

It was two minutes till midnight. His head was spinning, and it took a while for him to realize that he had strolled out of the park and arrived in front of a flower boutique that opened until twelve AM. He decided to visit Fuji's grave. The cemetery was nearby, in any case.

The lone store owner was a heavyset man with a toothbrush mustache and tiny glasses shoved-up a pug nose. He was watching reruns of _Happy Family_ from a small, counter-sized black television set sitting on the flower counter.

"I'd like to buy some white lilies," Tezuka brushed his hair back from his glasses. Obaa-san had always told him how well lilies dressed-up a gravestone, and Fuji's favorite color was white.

The guy didn't look up at first, "Sorry, we're not open right now, sir, and it would be nice if—why, you're _T-Tezuka Kunimitsu_!"

And here comes the paparazzi…Oh, he could hear it now. _Tezuka Kunimitsu, rumored boyfriend of corporate tycoon Atobe Keigo, seen stalking through a flower shop during midnight. Could he have been cheating on Atobe? Or is this a typical new development of the recent heart-breaker?_

Just because he was _close_ with Atobe didn't necessarily mean that he was supposed to be _intimate_. Gossip columns were always gossip columns.

The thought sickened the bespectacled-man, and his nose scrunched-up just a bit, otherwise betraying no shock. It was better to remain stoically silent, a trait he had picked up through the years, "Please, make it quick," he responded, a bit of impatience edging into his voice.

The cutting and wrapping of the limp stalks took a whole five minutes, and, after he'd finally convinced the store owner that _yes_, he _would_ like to pay for the flowers, and _no_, he didn't give out autographs, it was 12:24. Tezuka made his way out of the maze of flower pots and tin buckets, ushered by the awed flower vendor, and hastily out the door to walk to the city east burial grounds.

It was too late to take a cab. He opted to walk.

Out on the sidewalk again, the mist reached a whole new level of intensity. As Tezuka stumbled confusedly towards his destination, he couldn't help but wonder why all the bad things happened to him. It couldn't have been that his didn't want the good to occur, it was really just because…

He'd always been a tad too late. Too late to catch the late bus. Too late to understand the signals the fangirls were always sending him. Too late to notice his attraction to the second-best man on his tennis team.

They say that people with charisma were always more suited to the quiet life, no matter how many people were pulled towards them. Tezuka wondered if he had, at any point in his life, contained any of that charisma.

And the ironic part was, Tezuka had always hated tardiness, and prized punctuality. He laughed.

The mist around him cleared, and Tezuka was reminded of the lull in a storm, the calm before something dastardly appeared. It left him standing at a barren street intersection, one that he didn't really recognize. Tezuka clutched the clear cellophane wrapped around the lilies tighter.

His eyes widened when he peered across the street…

_No way._

But it was.

_No. It couldn't be._

But it was…

Standing at the far side of the asphalt paving, the blinking red lights of the street flashing blindly behind, with a gentle smile and a quiet wave, his light brown bangs dancing in the invisible breeze, was _Fuji Syuusuke_.

_I must be hallucinating;_ the brown-haired man thought irritably, _he's dead_.

_And he wasn't coming back. Certainly not_.

Yet the figure of the boy seemed to grow sharper, bolder until it was almost _impossible_ for him to be a figment of imagination. His face shone in the traffic lights, and his left foot was moving back and forth, like he was getting impatient for Tezuka to come over and greet him—perhaps even an embrace and a kiss, or two. What was even more startling, though, was that he young-looking—no creases in his skin, no hair sprouting from the chin…this was the Fuji that haunted Tezuka's dreams at night, clammed his palms with cold sweat and made his breathing ragged…the forever pre-pubescent, girly-version of Fuji Syuusuke. The smiling version, the close-eyed wonder of their middle school years. The one that, with one look, could send Mizuki Hajime into his little heaven-hell-interlude, could throw even Kirihara Akaya off his game, could stun the prince himself, Echizen Ryoma.

Except this time, unlike all those other times in Tezuka's own thoughts, he was real. Unbelievably real.

_Tezuka, do you believe in ghosts?_

He wondered why this line always came up at the most appropriate moments.

"_S-Syuusuke…_" his beginning was feeble.

The boy gave a nod of encouragement, and leaned back expectantly against a telephone pole.

"_You…I…"_

_Another nod._

He took a step forward.

Another step. Another. Until he had broken into a run across the street.

Fuji just stood there, smiling serenely, until the boys eyes had somehow widened with horror, shocked.

And Tezuka was, once again, too late.

Too late, to notice the large truck speeding down the road. The moment he saw the vehicle was the moment the large bumper plowed into his chest.

BEEP, BEEP!

The mist shattered into a billion pieces.

When the paramedics left, the only sigh of there ever being an accident on the corner was a scattered, trampled bouquet of white lilies, each and every petal stained with droplets of a damp, bloody red.

_/to die?/

* * *

_**A/N: This. Is. The biggest piece of shit I've ever written. You don't have to review, unless you plan to flatter me. And I don't think I deserve it, at all.**

**Actually, I doubt ANYONE but me actually read this thing through...-.-"  
**


	2. BEGIN

**A warning, that the result pairing is het, but yaoi all the way until the end. And really, it's still yaoi at the end, but I've obscured it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't plan to run the show, either.**

* * *

"_You've killed me."_

"_I don't see how. You're alive and breathing right in front of me."_

"_Well…you will. One day."_

_That was the last piece of conversation they shared._

_/to remember/_

He was sure he was dead. Or close to dead, at least. And funny thought, he couldn't see anything at all, but a stifling white light that blocked everything else. Sharpening in intensity, so much that he didn't think he could _think_ anymore with it in his head. It was like one of those thick, fire blankets that they wrapped around you when you were on fire, the kind that suffocated you and would've like to stay right there, like the seaweed skin on a piece of wasabi sushi, until someone ripped it off.

Tezuka thought it a fair and detailed analysis.

And then, far away, he began to hear a still beep of a heart machine, or an alarm clock. Very loud, screaming in his ear. It wasn't beating like _his_ regular heartbeat, not at all, but rather in a slow, sluggish, rhythm. He could assume that he was awake, because he started to feel pain everywhere, thick bruising pain that took away his rationalization.

He heard something else.

_Tezuka…_

It was disembodied voice, definitely, or Tezuka would've been able to see some sort of motion in front of him, at least. And it was melodic, to a degree of sudden, extreme familiarity. One voice that he knew all too well. He struggled to remain conscious to hear it.

_I…I just wanted to talk to you. One last time._

Was he back? Really back?

_I know, now. I knew it all along, I guess,_ the voice continued,_ you loved me. And yet we both know what really happened. Don't you remember, Kunimitsu?_

And then he remembered. And wondered how he could've ever forgotten.

That night. The one that changed everything. It was so simple and so complicated, all at once. It made his head hurt to think about it.

_How couldn't I love you? You were everything. _

Everything? Fuji was everything. That's how it always was. Never different. Forever Fuji. Forever Fuji and Tezuka.

_But you never thought so. You never thought I cared about you._

There came a bitter laugh. Fuji's laugh, all the same.

_That night…you remember now, see? I thought you must really hate me. Do you find me repulsive, is that why? Or were you just afraid of what everyone would've thought? What the hell was wrong with you?_

All uttered in one breath. Tezuka wanted to cry, that he never thought of that, he never wished it that way; he would've given everything to have that night back. He wanted to shake his head, shout out, but he couldn't move. The unspoken apology suspended, deepened through time, like a frozen song playing its last notes. Swan song.

He wanted to die.

And Fuji's tone changed, and pleaded instead, at the thought.

_But, for God's sake, don't die. Don't join me, not until you have to. Only I deserve it,_ and then another bitter laugh shook the air.

But he wanted to die. He really did.

_Please, don't. I won't follow you anymore! I just wanted to see you one last time, but I was wrong. Please, don't! _

But he—

_LIVE. PLEASE._

And then it was gone.

The beep of the machine stopped altogether, the green line bent backwards to its original shape. And everything else warped into an empty blackness.

_/to lust/_

"_Ahh…mmm…"_

"Be awed, Ryoma, by ore-sama."

Atobe smirked as he watched the flushed younger boy try to squeeze his way out on top, pawing dozily at the older man's neck. He looked just like a restless kitten. Occasionally, when he felt more relaxed, Atobe would let Ryoma take a turn pounced on top of his chest, but it was better to be in control. That Echizen. Always wanted to be above him, even in sex.

It was arousing. In a kind-of perverted way.

_Actually, anything that arouses you could be classified as perverted._

(That was Tezuka's –one of only _two–_ comments on the matter.)

"You've been…using too much American-brand acne medicine, haven't you," Ryoma's breath puffed softly against the clumped, slightly damp silk bed sheets, his muffled laughter creating little cloudlike dents that rippled through. That was the result of high-traffic satellite in the hotel room. Ryoma had been asked to pose in a television advertisement for Clearasil, and Atobe found it very annoying how often the boy had to make a reference to it.

The diva's frown grew as he lifted himself off the younger boy and stood on his haunches. It closed the distance between his pelvis and Ryoma's ass, and the boy's breath hitched in his throat.

He rubbed his temples, and breathed out, slowly.

"I'm tired, Echizen."

And at this, the tennis athlete beneath him flipped himself over so his golden eyes met Atobe's violet ones.

"This is about Tezuka-buchou, isn't it?"

Atobe was always surprised at, how nothing could escape this tennis prodigy. He recalled the first time he'd ever thought of the boy as more than just another opponent to crush, another cocky brat there to challenge his reign as king. During that tennis match at the Nationals in his last year of junior high, right before he'd wrenched the razor out of that idiot's hands and shaved his head, when his was still lying on the ground and trying to get a grip on giving up a match to a freshman. It was still something he was quite sore to touch on, and he didn't know if it was the head or the fatigue that hand rained on him that day, but he could never get the image of Echizen Ryoma, sweating and panting on the other side of the tennis net like his life depended on it, out of his mind, ever again.

And he realized. It wasn't just because Ryoma had beaten him in a match, but because of that glint in the boy's eyes when he _had_. That look. Those sharp thoughts that reflected right back into Atobe's eyes. They were the absolute same.

It was a little lust, nothing compared to how he felt for Echizen's buchou, but it would have to do.

The next time he'd had a nice talk with Ryoma, anywhere not close to sweaty tennis regulars, it was in his own mansion, where he had the upper-hand.

And he'd certainly used it to his advantage, Atobe remembered.

_That had only been a couple years back, probably only a few months after Fuji Syuusuke left them all. Atobe called a business party together at his home, in hopes of a diversion from the recent bar-incident of Tezuka revealing his long-term crush, and stowing away the last bit of compassion Atobe still had. It also provided a nice way to display the power the Atobe Group held in the country. All the Japanese pop idols (those pretty, back-flipping ones that Kikumaru Eiji had joined, included), the famous actresses and writers, athletes made the guest list, Echizen Ryoma included (now a nine-time Grand Slam winner with a cocky air to match)._

_And when the might host of the party caught sight of the young tennis star stirring his cocktail coolly amongst a group of gushing journalists and high-class socialites, he grew curious and ordered a request for a private meeting to be sent for Echizen: if he could be kind enough to stay after the party for a while and have a chat with Atobe-sama._

_He wanted to see if the boy had changed. Even just a little bit…_

"_What do you want, Atobe?" the boy had worn an annoyed look as he stepped into Atobe's private meeting room, having accepted the invitation politely as a smart step to avoid media confrontation about past-grudges and old-school-rivalry. He looked around the chamber walls with a thinly-veiled look of antipathic disdain in the outline of all the purple décor and unnecessary frills along the curtains._

_(So he hadn't changed very much.)_

"_Ore-sama hasn't talked to you for a few years since high school, and _that's_ all you have to say?" Atobe's voice was a tad bit incredulous._

_Ryoma shrugged, "We never had much to talk about,"—and upon the diva's threatening glare—"Except that time when I stole Ryuzaki Sakuno from you."_

"_You never 'stole' her," the man was a bit miffed at the idea, "I was never with her, and I never intended it."_

"_But you often gave her the eye. It's not like I don't hear those conversations she had with her loud friend," the boy was getting more comfortable. He sat down on the leather couch, stretching out his tired, muscled legs in front of him and placing them on a nearby chair. He was wearing casual-elegant cut-offs, that showed off his toned skin and tennis muscles. Atobe couldn't help but direct his eyes towards them._

_Was he trying to flirt? Atobe's eyebrows rose, but he made no comment about it, "Ore-sama had the impression that you were just trying to challenge me."_

"_I wasn't."_

"_Well, I—"_

"…_and I think that pretty-much ends our conversation," Ryoma sneered, adjusting his permanently-situated, signature white cap, "and don't you have any idea how _conceited_ you sound? I can't say I'm really enjoying my talk with you, _Atobe-sama_. If there isn't anything you want with me, I'm leaving."_

_He stood up, gave a giant, mocking bow, and wandered out of the room._

_Atobe, for once, felt rather happy that his mansion was big enough for Echizen to get lost in. The boy had taken a step for what he assumed to be the exit, but by some stroke of obscure luck, ended up in Atobe's private, purple chambers. _

_Blinded by all the violently violet decorations, Ryoma took another step back, realizing his error, and stumbled into a firm body. A firm, well-built, expensive-cologne-sprayed body._

_Truth be told, Atobe really had no idea why he had sent that request. It was impulse, he supposed, and he guessed he really wanted to talk with someone that he'd been familiar with in his school days (Tezuka had grown awfully difficult to converse with, and sometimes a conversation between the two of them consisted of only Atobe going on a lengthy rant and a couple of hn's from the latter). Besides, he hated to be called conceited. Atobe was just beautiful and glorious in nature. He couldn't do anything about what people thought of his beauty._

"_What do I want," Atobe muttered, and then he had completely lost it and pushed Ryoma against the wall and kissed him senseless._

Ah, the power of lust.

And yet it was such a thrill to have Echizen give it to him like that, to call him conceited without the bat of an eyelash.

_Another item on the _Things That Arouse Atobe _list._

(That being the second thing that Tezuka had ever mentioned about Atobe's love life, and then having gone into his usual stony silence.)

The experts would have called it sexual tension, but Atobe would've simply defined it with one word: _support_. Or he might've just insisted that he'd done it entirely out of spite over the whole Tezuka-loves-Fuji…_thing_. Whatever it was.

It was only after several "meetings", and a few glasses of tongue-loosening Russian vodka, had Ryoma gotten the full truth from Atobe.

"_This is about Tezuka-buchou, isn't it?"_

"Ore-sama visited him in the hospital yesterday. He wasn't awake."

"What a caring—_ah_, business partner you are, Keigo…"

"Shut up."

"…to visit Tezuka-buchou like that, all _dolled-up_ in your super-fancy—"

"Why do you still call him your buchou?" Atobe cut him off before Ryoma could go into the gory details, "He's long since resigned from that position."

There was an uncomfortable silence as both of them thought it through.

"You know perfectly well how I feel about Tezuka," the boy's voice was small, soft as he replied, biting his lip, "Just like you know perfectly well how I feel when we're doing…_this._" He gesticulated towards the bed and the scented candles lining the walls and the closed drapes over the windows.

And indeed, they both knew. And that was precisely the reason they had needed each other for support.

Atobe noted that he was beginning to sound like an old sap.

"Stop thinking about that," he grunted, and then he really _did_ shut the young tennis star up, by licking his chest lightly. All thoughts of Tezuka-buchou were lost as the younger boy rolled over, eliciting a breathy moan.

Tezuka, his ass.

And perhaps not in the most metaphorical way.

_/to live/_

"Syuusuke…" he rasped, clawing at the air in front of him.

The nurse's head jumped back in shock. Tezuka Kunimitsu-san was awake.

And the man in the bed was too busy within his own thoughts to notice much anything else.

Of course he knew why Fuji had left. It was blatantly obvious, and not simply because he had _given up on life_. No, that was just the easy way to get out of it. Tezuka had known it all along, that he had been the cause of it all. He just didn't want to believe it, he hoped that Fuji would have forgotten about him and moved on since that night, and let Tezuka be the one who would drown in self-pity and depression, secretly hoping for love. He had just assumed that no one would ever remember those minutes that changed their lives, think of it as just a little blip in the master plan, nothing worthy of attention.

Or it would've turned out rather differently.

Because Tezuka Kunimitsu had murdered Fuji Syuusuke.

Throughout all the years, he had convinced himself otherwise, mapped an intricately-woven web of secure lies that kept his own consciousness from discovering the grave mistake he had made, that kept him in his safe little shell. He had fed himself amnesiacs, painkillers, sleep pills, so much _shit_ that _finally_ one day he had crashed and completely lost the events of that one night where it had all gone wrong, that one night in junior high.

The scary thing was that it had almost very nearly worked. Tezuka had effectively fooled himself, and everyone around him, into believing that it had been he who'd loved Fuji Syuusuke in the beginning, and never the other way around.

For had it been the latter, Tezuka didn't know if he could still live to bear it all.

That night…

_He'd invited Fuji over for a study session after tennis practice, hoping to finish the Algebra homework together so as not to worry about it tomorrow during passing period. Midterms were coming soon, and Tezuka was an anxious student._

_The evening proved to be very unlike the one he had planned. Right off the bat, when they had settled down with their books, had Fuji snapped his shut and planted his chin in his hands on the desk._

"_Ne, Tezuka, have you ever loved?" It was another one of the tensai's questions, the ones he asked when he wanted Tezuka to talk to him and not just grunt one-worded responses. The ones that you couldn't help but want to answer, because they were so full of thought._

"_What are you talking about, Fuji?" Tezuka responded innocently. At that point in his life, nothing had really mattered but tennis. Tennis, and his math homework._

_He couldn't ever have been prepared for what had followed._

_Fuji had his grin plastered on his cheeks, the one he reserved for the aftermath of feeding a victim a piece of his wasabi sushi or a cup of Aozu._

"_You've never kissed a guy before, have you?" it was a subtle move, and had Tezuka not been too tired from tennis practice, he would've caught on much more quickly and stopped Fuji before he could do something completely out of line. He would've been more aware of the environment change, and kept his guard up just a bit higher._

_Instead, he just shook his head slowly, and tapped the Algebra worksheet with his pen. Tezuka had been on the receiving end of many-a-fangirl forcing themselves upon him, and been kissed by about half of the Seigaku female population (students and teachers alike), but he'd never felt the lips of a boy's on his own._

_He didn't really care about it, much, but then Fuji had suddenly opened his eyes and let out a bark of laughter. The serious blue drifted up to Tezuka's, and before the tennis captain had known what he was trying to pull, he felt a pair of lips, Fuji's lips, being pressed down on his, molding into his mouth._

"_Now you know," he heard him mutter, and felt himself being pulled into it, the less-than-willing victim of a violent hurricane._

_They were soft, softer than even some girls' lips he had kissed. And instead of the usual strawberry, candy gloss, and occasional mint, there was instead a sharp, though almost tasteless wasabi-filled flavor that Tezuka couldn't say he disliked. But when he realized that he'd actually been tasting Fuji's lips, chewing on it, almost –_Fuji's lips!_– and that he was already halfway backed-up against his bedpost, his cheeks had reddened and he ended it abruptly by pushing the tensai roughly off of him, glaring and wiping his mouth._

"_Why the _hell_ did you just do that?" He had sworn. Tezuka never swore, and Fuji seemed to realize how serious this was, as regular-Tezuka turned into crazy-Tezuka._

"_But, I—"_

"_Don't ever do that again. You will run a hundred laps tomorrow at practice. Get out of my house."_

_And then he had ordered for him to never come back, something regular-Tezuka would never have done._

_Fuji's expression was dark, "Damn it, Tezuka. I love you. Goddammit, you never get it."_

"_Leave. _Now._"_

_The tensai's laughter echoed down the hall, "Don't you know how _stupid_ you sound, ordering me to run laps for kissing you?"_

"_I told you to leave," he was firm. And he wasn't about to admit that he thought it was rather embarrassing, too, that he had assigned Fuji laps for a kiss. A silly reflex._

"_You've killed me," he whispered, his voice now flat and expressionless._

"_I don't see how. You're alive and breathing right in front of me."_

"_Well…you will. One day."_

_That was the last piece of conversation they shared._

_And as Fuji left the room, the tensai continued to laugh. And laugh. And if one had listened closely enough, it was impossible to say that that laughter wasn't complete fake shit as hell._

_And the depressing, ironic part? Both of them never truly looked back on it._

Thus the death of his one true friend in the world.

And when he'd finally realized his feelings had been real, it was too late. Much, much too late.

This was only the beginning of a series of events that led to the destruction of Fuji Syuusuke. He'd begun to date, soon after they started high school, and to prove –more to himself than anyone else– that he didn't give a damn for Fuji, Tezuka asked out the most popular girl in school, who'd gladly obliged, having admitted to a crush on the sexy tennis captain since grade six.

He took every chance he could to kiss her in the hallways—often in front of members of his tennis team, the tensai included, openly allowed everyone to know that he was taken, and still the most-wanted lover on campus. Still the heart-breaker, the one who was still a virgin who played it to his advantage. And once, out of sheer pugnacity and self-denial, he'd even had a make-out session with Echizen in the locker room, leaving the boy confused and disoriented after he dumped him at the door.

All to prove a point he could never prove.

Little did he know, all these actions, each time he dumped another girl and made the school gossip columns, each time he placed another kiss on another girl's lips, Tezuka was giving gut-throwing, heart-wrenching punches to Fuji. Ones that were more strenuous to bear, than even playing a match against _hadoukyuu_-Ishida, than a hundred cups of Penal Tea (something Inui would've readily denied, but would have been true nonetheless).

It had killed the boy, eaten him up from the inside-out until there was nothing left but hollow stares and broken smiles. Eiji had helped to restore it, much as he could help Fujiko and still remain a happy-go-lucky person, even though it was difficult to coax the tensai out of his ghostly form and give a little hug every-so-often.

And after that, the drugs had kicked in, the sleepless, caffeine-laced nights had shown their relentless effect, and Tezuka Kunimitsu was admitted into the hospital in the name of surgery on his arm, when he was really receiving drug tests and stimulation shots, and a couple of pain-relief pills that numbed-the-flesh for three days.

He'd completely forgotten about that night, and, unconsciously, he hoped that he would never remember, ever again.

_/to wish/_

_He turned the glass around and around the face in front of him, the base of it distorting the boy's features, and catching the light of the delicate chandelier above their faces, changing the color of his skin and casting an apex of brilliant white, flushed skin._

"_You're refracted, but you're still you."_

_Ryoma didn't share his humor, "Well, that's a bit of a duh, now, isn't it?"_

_Atobe's mouth went south, and his teeth clenched, "That's not what ore-sama meant."_

"_I _know_ what you were trying to do. You were trying to seduce me with flowery language," the boy sighed, "and, sadly enough, I believe you."_

_He leaned down to cover his lips with his own._

_The boy stopped it._

"_Let me show you something," his voice barely above a whisper, and his raven hair covering most of his cheeks, giving him a wild appearance._

_It was noisy outside the hotel window. Bare-chested, he pulled the curtains out, rays of sunlight finally entering the room and causing an inhuman screech to be released from the older man on the bed._

"_I'M _NAKED_, ECHIZEN! CLOSE IT!"_

_But he wouldn't, of course. Instead, he cracked the large, bay window open until a gust of air whooshed through the room, ruffling his hair further and sending a set of goose bumps down his back._

_And then, with a move like lightning, the boy had reached out his hand and snatched a loud, squawking pigeon from the window sill, "I've found our noise-maker."_

"_What the hell are you—" Atobe had curled-up into a ball on the bed, now, shivering from the cold._

"_Sch. Shhh…" the tennis star whispered, and took the bird in his palm, cuddling it and petting it and caressing its lusterless, gray feathers._

"_It's beautiful, ne?"_

"_Wish you'd do that to _me_, sometime," Atobe muttered._

_And just like that, the bird had fallen asleep, right there in Ryoma's palm, making a soft, cooing sound as its wings settled down gently and it relaxed, no longer squawking its head off and tense as a brick. _

_Ryoma smirked._

_He opened the window again, and –just like that– he dropped the sleeping bird into the bustling streets below. It plummeted down._

_The diva freaked out, and jumped out of bed and stuck his head towards the window frame, "You're gonna kill it!"_

_He watched the bird drop, like a stone, closer and closer from their 18__th__ Hôtel Royale level towards the black pavement below, not showing signs of waking up any time soon. It was just falling, reaching terminal velocity, like it was never going to stop until it would plop -SPLAT- against the ground._

_But then, at the last moment, probably about five inches away from the ground, the bird suddenly opened its eyes, _wide,_ wings flapped outwards, beak gaped open and screech as sharp as any foghorn. Like a bullet, the gray bird shot upwards, its motions already a blur as it flew upwards to the multi-faceted sky, eyes open and not caring, just flying and fighting tooth-and-nail to go anywhere, _anywhere_ but the ground._

"_That's me," the boy spoke, after an awed silence. _

"_That's just like me after he left."_

_And then he shut the window frame, the shades, the curtains, so that the room was warm again, and climbed back into bed, and then he had stuck his chin in the other man's chest and then he burst into tears._

_/to see/_

"Tezuka-kun, how are you feeling?"

He opened his eyes. A shaft of light entered his pupils, and he closed them again. The pain had bee on-and-off for a while, but now it hit him with the nozzle at full-blast. Every fiber of his body hurt, burnt, seized with a fiery jolt if he so much as _thought_ of moving. And then he'd noticed that the voice that had spoken was not the usual nurse, but…

Fuji Yumiko?

He opened his eyes again, refusing to fall for the pain, this time, and was greeted with the warmest –and also the saddest– smile he had ever seen.

"Why are you here?" his throat was parched, and the words came out more froggish and croaky than he had intended, grated through like pebbles on sandpaper. He grimaced.

The woman, though she was middle-aged and hardly young, had a simple aura around her that reflected a timeless beauty –_far surpassing Atobe's claim_, Tezuka thought– that was not obscured by the thin layer of makeup she wore. Her smile, her voice, her looks…it all reminded Tezuka of Fuji…so much that he didn't really want to look at her anymore.

He was the one who had sent her brothers to a place they couldn't return from, dismembered her family and left her as an only (and eldest) child. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd come here to slap him until he really _did_ croak. The red marks would be a sick reminder of what he had done, but totally worth it, from the nail marks right down to the last whorl, last arch, last line of her fingerprint.

He had no such luck.

"The nurse said…that you called for Syuusuke a while ago, when you woke up," She explained, "and I was about to come visit you anyway. You wouldn't know _ho_w much security and verification I had to go through to come see Tezuka-san, what with all the media circulating the accident. I swear, those bodyguards outside would've stripped me down, had I not threatened to sue them."

Her laugh was charming, but the thought of Yumiko talking of something remotely vulgar, of _any _Fuji do so, it sent a set of shivers down Tezuka's broken spine. It was so similar to Fuji's own, and it made him cringe even more.

Her voice lowered, a hushed sound against the already too-quiet background of the hospital, "Syuusuke…he used to talk about you a lot at home, Tezuka-kun. I've never seen him more serious about anything, and you and I both know that he never took anything too seriously. I don't want to pry, but if there was anything between the two of you…? As more than friends, I mean."

Tezuka sighed. And she _would _want to know. Being the older sibling, the one who took care of Syuusuke and Yuuta, Fuji Yumiko sort of had a right to this kind of thing.

But it was precisely because nothing had happened, nothing except a soft, wasabi-touched kiss twelve years ago, that really dampened her thirst for knowledge; that would "explain" it.

Yeah. Twelve_, freaking_ years ago.

And he felt the urge to cry, again, as he told her the story.

"I killed him…I killed Syuusuke…" his voice was hushed and cracked as ever. What had happened that night, what had occurred beyond.

_Ne, Tezuka, have you ever loved?_

_You've never kissed a guy before, have you?_

_Damn it, Tezuka! I love you. Goddamnit, you never get it._

_I'm sorry, Eiji._

_I…I just wanted to talk with you. One last time._

_Do you find me repulsive, is that why?_

No, it wasn't why. It wouldn't ever be. He had been too scared then, and too late now. But he would change that.

"I came here with my mind set," she said.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"I'm here," she bit her lip, "to offer myself. If you would ever accept, it would release the burden we've all got in our hearts since his death."

"_I believe it."_

_/to change/_

Tezuka. Fuji. Fuji, Tezuka. The words, the cadence, the rhythm, it fit each other like no other words would. They would always be, even if it wasn't the Fuji that everyone expected. That Fuji was gone, because of a mistake. One that Tezuka regretted deeply.

It had been forgiven thought, almost as a light joke, by the woman beside him, Fuji Yumiko. The beautiful Fuji Yumiko, who's long, slender fingers were curled in Tezuka's hand, a ring on her finger and ring on his. The were sitting on a park bench, leaves from the trees swirling downwards in a rustic pattern. He had on a pair of reflective sunglasses to keep the public from guessing, she was cheerful and cuddled against his chest.

He had felt the weight, at last, leave his chest, as the married couple spent the first day of their first week sitting right there on the bench, under the autumn leaves.

And he was almost too happy to see a ghostly mist gathering, and a breeze swirling around the edges of a pale face in the sky…

_Goodbye, Kunimitsu._

Farewell, Fuji Syuusuke.

_/to love/_

"_So they got married, hn?"_

"_Yes, Atobe-sama."_

"_Well, I guess that's the way it's supposed to end. All happy and stuff."_

"_Yes, Atobe-sama."_

"_Well, then. Get me a cab. I need to make a visit to a hotel."_

"_Yes, sir."_

_---------------------_

**A/N: And this is the longest thing I've written, or rather, the longest word-count-per-chappie. Amazing, ne? Even though it's absolute crap, I'm still rather proud. :D.**

**Thanks for reading! If you feel kind enough, give a little review~!**


End file.
